


An ode to summer.

by starsonyourskin



Category: The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: F/F, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Light Angst, Romantic Fluff, Summer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsonyourskin/pseuds/starsonyourskin
Summary: "The scent of the suncream reminded her of summers gone by; sticky fingers after a picnic; an army of ants marching in a straight line to take the leftover crumbs; plump jewels of blueberries or strawberries or raspberries, bought on the side of the road at a farmer’s stall."Stella and Reed are enjoying the season's first Pimm's, and Stella gets a little sunburned.A series of ficlets. Will update sporadically.





	1. Chapter 1

It was spring in Belfast, and all Stella could look at was how the dappled light that filtered through the trees threw little light spots on Reed’s shoulder. Reed wore a strappy little thing that showed off her collar bones. The light spots danced in a gentle flowing rhythm, in tandem to the swaying of the trees. They were sitting outside, by the river Lagan, and blossoms were flowing gently downstream. In the shadows, there was a dampness to the spring air, but it was wonderful to sit out in the sun. The first properly hot day of the year, so Pimm’s cups littered the table and Stella felt loose limbed and free. After all, you never know how many of these days you’re going to get in Belfast. The urge to light up a cigarette, inhale the smoke deeply and feel herself relax even further snuck up on her. It’d been years since she’d smoked, but her voice still bore traces of gravel. She took another long look at Reed and realised that her urge wasn’t to smoke at all. Feeling a little audacious, she leaned over and said:

“Are you wearing anything underneath?” Stella’s gaze travelled down to Reed’s breasts to make sure she was making herself clear. 

Reed took one look at the lust in Stella’s eyes and decided to play with it. “No, but I have a t-shirt in my bag because I knew you’d get sunburned sitting out here. SPF 25 just isn’t sufficient for someone with your skin.” She affectionately touched the tops of Stella’s shoulders, moving to her cheekbones. “You’re a delightful shade of pale pink, soon to be bright red.” 

Stella absolutely abhorred being looked after, and Reed knew it. She saw Stella’s desire dissipate in seconds. “I don’t feel sunburned. I’m fine.” Stella took another swig from her glass, draining it, and picked up her phone.

Reed fished out a compact with a mirror from her bag and gave it to Stella, who took it from her with a frown. “Oh,” was all she said when she noticed that it wasn’t just her cheekbones and shoulders that were burned, and she touched her face, as if that was going to make it go away.

Reed looked at her with a self-satisfied smile. ”I’ll tell you what, if you let me put some suncream on you now, I’ll give you a little massage with some aloe vera later.” Reed took Stella’s sulky silence as assent and put a big glob of suncream on the tips of her fingers. She put on too much, purposely, because Stella could take herself so seriously sometimes and to hear her giggle in self-deprecation was the most wonderful thing. She first dabbed the bridge of Stella’s nose, who recoiled in response when it dripped down onto her camisole, then her cheekbones, her forehead, her cupid’s bow. Reed knew that Stella didn’t find this particularly sexy, because they were in public, and Stella wasn’t in charge, but she persisted anyway. 

The scent of the suncream reminded her of summers gone by; sticky fingers after a picnic; an army of ants marching in a straight line to take the leftover crumbs; plump jewels of blueberries or strawberries or raspberries, bought on the side of the road at a farmer’s stall. Afternoons spent seaside, children wearing jelly shoes to pad down pebbled beaches, and the greasy smell of fish and chips in the air. Languid days in rolling green hills, walking hand in hand, sun beating down, then it clouding over and the wind chilling her to the bone. Those days she’d been with her husband, and she’d liked those days. But this had a rightness to it. A justness. And even though her Stella could be stubborn as all get out, uncommunicative to the point of silence, it was undeniable that Stella was hers and Reed was Stella’s and that was the way it was going to be and how it should always be.

When Stella took the compact to look at the white splodges on her face, she gave Reed another one of her glares, who couldn’t help but smile naughtily. She took a little bit of the excess and swiped it on Reed’s cheek. “Oh, but I don’t need it,” Reed teased. 

They didn’t say much, that day, but it was a content, beautiful silence. The afternoon stretched into a quiet evening and in between murmurings, of theirs, of other people around them, Reed looked over at Stella and saw her as if she’d seen her for the first time. Waves of light blonde falling to her shoulders, laugh lines deepening in the sun, a tumbling of fabric around her neckline. The sun brought out a new joyfulness that was particular to the season, and the air hummed with bright possibility. It was a delight to her, how the nature of their love changed over time.


	2. Sunflower looking to the moon.

The fan whirrs lightly in the corner of the room. They’d closed the window to keep the bugs out in the summer heat. It turns 180 degrees every minute, and Stella waits for the light breeze blow over her sweaty body in her head. Waits for it, then relaxes. It’s hypnotic and infuriating. She’s never done well in the heat. Her thighs stick together in her pencil skirt during the day, making her feel a little too human-shaped to do her job. She reaches out for the glass on the bedside table. Empty. The floorboards feel cool to the soles of her feet as she tiptoes to the bathroom to fill it up. 

She doesn’t return to bed immediately, instead leans against the doorpost of their ensuite. Reed exhales through her nose and makes a funny little sound every time she does it. She watches her naked form breath in and out, starfished over the bed. Legs and arms akimbo, like a jumper waiting for her chalk outline. Stella is briefly repulsed by the morbidity of her thoughts. What’s causing her mind to jump from soft sleeplessness to such somberness? 

After all, they’d spent a sun-drenched afternoon with friends, barbecuing. These slow lessons in humanity that Reed is giving her, how to friend, how to enjoy yourself without alcohol or sex, how to find joy — they are the hardest thing. Stella thought she was having a perfectly lovely time. Reed, jumping up with the purest delight in her eyes to throw her arms around her best friend, against the backdrop of Stella’s fenced off tiny London garden. Cold drink in hand, smell of chicken skewers on the barbecue, smiles of friends Reed loves dearly. But if she chases that image to find how she really felt, it is awkwardness. The awkwardness of finding out that she doesn’t care about Reed’s dearest friend’s husband’s tales of seafood dinners overlooking the bay. She doesn’t know what to say to his scripted questions: why did you join the Met, how did you and Reed meet, what do you do for fun? What does one say when one is not playing the role of the weary, intelligent detective? 

When she looks at Reed, she knows so clearly what she is lacking. That spark, that flow, that naturalness. Breath. A long time ago she heard that sunflowers turn their faces to follow the sun. Stella’s the sunflower that turns towards the moon.

Sometimes she thinks she will never be really real. 

It is a loss, too, to give up the way of life that she knew and to step into love. The loneliness is so comforting. The familiar sameness of your isolation. What if you choose what you really want, and you find out it still disappoints you?

But when she slides under the covers and reclaims her half of the bed, she finds in the sleeping face of her girlfriend what had been eluding her earlier. She pushes against her girlfriend’s sleeping body to find her spot again, and Reed throws a clammy arm over her shoulder. She’s here. She’s loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stole a line from dearest Ani: http://www.danah.org/ani/EducatedGuess/Akimbo.html


	3. Dani/Stella

It had taken 2 weeks, 5 verbal reminders and 3 eyebrow raises to get Dani to stop saying ma’am to Stella when she had to follow her around for security reasons. But tonight was her night off, if she could make it out of Stella’s office.

“There’s jazz at the music venue near the Merchant,” Stella said, her coat on her shoulders, her back half turned to Dani.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Dani replied. “Do you like jazz?”  _ Dumbest way to make conversation ever. _

Stella was stood slight bent over her desk, bag in hand, ready to go, but a file had caught her eye, and she was reading with a frown spread across her forehead. 

Seconds passed. Then half a minute. Then a minute. No answer. 

Dani was so frustrated with herself.  _ Stop trying to make this beautiful blonde creature be interested in you. She’s just being polite, in her frosty way. _

Stella straightened her back, checked her pockets for keys and walked out the door past Dani. Thick, heavy silence hung between them while they walked out of her office, past the front desk, to Dani’s car, who was driving her home.

“It’s called Bert’s bar.” Stella leaned forward to enter it into the GPS-system, curls falling across her face.  Dani was doing her best not to stare creepily. Or too obviously. But perhaps it was too late for that now. _ That was her only reason. To let you know she wasn’t going back to her hotel.  _

“Ever been?” Stella asked, peering out the window. 

“Don’t think so.” Dani swallowed a ma’am.

Stella continued to look out the window, a rain-soaked Belfast flitting past. Her perfume was more noticeable in the confined space of the car, a citrussy wave.

“Ah, shit.” Dani hit a bout of slow-moving traffic that looked like it could take longer than the journey itself.

“You could turn off here, and head to my hotel,” Stella said, eyes still trained on the landscape.

“I thought you were going to Bert’s?” 

“Well, if you’re not interested in jazz, I thought we could skip the preliminaries.” A smirk danced around the corner of Stella’s mouth when she finally met Dani’s eyes.


	4. "Just data-gathering."

“Give me two secs, but do come in,” Reed had said at the door, when Stella’d showed up early in the morning to offer her a lift to work. Her bike was in the shop.

Stella had followed her through the hallway, heels clicking on the dark hardwood floor and was left standing in the living room while Reed rummaged in the kitchen.

The white bay window with the blue walls made the flat seem naval, or beach like. A holiday home. Belfast was seaside, but it wasn’t Brighton. Bright light streamed in from the street in rectangles.

Stella froze on her spot of the living room, knees locked. She felt that she had weaseled her way into this married woman’s home on false pretenses. She was an unwanted guest in a guest home. A colleague pretending to be a friend, denying she wanted more. As if she’d ever offer a lift to anyone else.

Her hands behind her back, Stella walked without making a sound to a wooden dressing table pressed up against the wall. She wasn’t snooping. Just data-gathering. There were two framed pictures, one of Reed with two dark-haired girls, and one of a couple of older women with round faces, grey hair and orange-red sarees with golden borders, who Stella presumed to be family. It was also where the post-that-still-needed-doing was kept. A collection of ripped open envelopes, tax letters, an energy bill. 

And a card from the Merchant. One of those business card types they give you with the bill. She listened out for any sounds from the kitchen, and hearing nothing, reached out and grabbed it, turning it over. Reed had scribbled something on the back. 

_Sorry. Another time. xx_

“Ready. Shall we head?” Reed walked in from the kitchen, bag slung over her shoulder. 

Stella looked like she was being caught by an attendant with a book after lights out at her all girls boarding school, and tried to hide it, badly.

Horrified, Reed snatched the card from her hands. Her face relaxed as she read it. “Oh, that. I guess the offer still stands, if you’re up for it.” She smiled, and looked straight at Stella while she turned to the hallway.

And with that, she sauntered off to Stella’s parked car.


	5. I never got to say a proper goodbye (Stellani)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani's celebrating her new promotion with her colleagues, but she's missing someone.

It had been Gail’s idea to properly celebrate Dani’s promotion with a night out. Dani was wrestling her way through the early evening crowd to find her at the bar, where Eastwood and Hagstrom were also stood waiting. It was buzzing, especially for a Thursday. Wisps of conversations reached her like curls of smoke. Patches of loud office workers were grouped at round tables, save for a solitary soul at the far end of the bar. She’d gone straight from basketball practice to here, with a rushed shower in between, and her hair was still slightly damp, the underside sticking to her neck. As much as she adored Gail for doing this for her, the hoopla about her promotion made her uncomfortable. Why her, and not Gail? 

Hagstrom punched her arm when she saw her. “Look at you, Ferrington. Didn’t think any of us would get a promotion out of the Spector case.”

Dani smiled with her lips pursed. Hagstrom was right, no-one should have got a promotion out of the Spector case, including her. But soon more colleagues started filing in, and the evening began to flow like the drinks on draught. The beer was cold and the conversation engaging. Everyone was pleased with a mid-week excuse for a night out. With a little effort she managed to move the group to the beer garden to enjoy the warm-ish evening. Sometimes it got so busy that there was standing room only, but tonight wasn’t one of those nights. There were two strings of twinkly lights suspended above the crowd in a criss-cross fashion. An awning above the bar kept the open space dry in case of rain. They found two tables and the group split up naturally into young and middle-aged, junior and senior. It was easier to hear everybody and she and Gail ordered some food at the back bar. 

“Promise me you’ll try for at least a week, Dani,” Gail said, after she ordered the vegan plate. “You’ll feel so much better.” 

“Well, it certainly hasn’t done much for your focus,” Dani said, and got a hamburger with onion rings, just to spite her. “You haven’t been off your phone all evening.” 

Gail pretended she was taken aback by her friend’s forthrightness. “It’s a new Tinder match, she said, eyes searching Dani’s face for a response. “This one actually talks back.”

Dani hadn’t really dated much after the case closed. Stella was in her head. She was in her head when she got to work in the morning, when she took the rubbish out, when she drank a glass of wine (instead of beer) after a long day, and maybe she’d also ordered the hamburger because it reminded her of Stella. For all she thought of her, she couldn’t remember her face that clearly, and in a weak moment (or two) she’d checked the intranet for her contact page. But she did hear her voice perfectly, soft and slow and dark. Some nights she even dreamt of her, but it was a dream Stella, not the Stella that she knew and recognised. Stella was at the pool, and she glided along beautifully in the water, but when she got to the steps, she dissolved, the water cascading off her back turning to ice, all of her diminished until there was nothing left. It left Dani breathless when she woke up, reaching for her phone, hovering her thumb over her Stella’s phone number, wanting to ask if she was okay. But she couldn’t. She was afraid of what Stella would think of a sudden text. Unwanted transference from a young police officer to an authority figure, a lesbian with an intense crush, someone so naive she hadn’t learned proper boundaries yet...

Gail went first, walked over to the table, balancing her plate, keys, and debit card and when her heel got stuck in between the pavement (Dani wasn’t the only one to have picked up a habit of Stella’s), she spilled some her drink on Anderson. He petted his shoulder vigorously with a napkin, and accidentally elbowed Hagstrom’s chin. It made Dani smile.

Maybe this was okay. 

The London glamour of her crush seemed to be from another universe. In this universe there was a little collection of weirdos. But they were her weirdos, the weirdos you get stuck with, and perhaps that’s for the better.

She took her seat and listened to Hagstrom’s dramatic action stories, laughing along with the others on cue, and contributing a witty remark when the conversation called for it. Everything looked fine. Everything was fine. But in the back of her head she was observing herself. She didn’t jump into what was immediately in front of her. Instead she held back, watching. 

“Did you hear Sally-Ann started to have supervised sessions with her children?” Gail said. “I always felt that it was just the circumstances that drove her to do what she did. She’s not a real threat.”

Dani agreed, and felt for her. 

“Sorry I’m late.” 

A breathy voice made her heart jump with a glimmer of hope. In the split second before she turned around, she was brimming with buoyancy. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t.

And in a barely-conscious haze, her body on autopilot, she was drawn into a hug and all she could feel was her face in soft smooth hair and the intoxicating cool scent of her musky perfume.

“I believe congratulations are in order, DS Ferrington?” Stella said, eyes beaming with kindness when she let go of Dani. 

Dani’s voice had got stuck somewhere in her throat. 

“That’s right,” Gail said, filling in for Dani. “We’re so proud. I hope you were able to find it okay.”

“Yes, your directions were very helpful.” Stella shrugged off her navy coat, looking impeccable as ever. The entire table just gawked at her in admiration, the conversation dead in the water.

“Good to see you all again,” Stella said as a greeting, nodding slightly, and got a murmured chorus of ‘likewise’ back. Hagstrom stood up quickly to get her a drink.

Dani’s mind returned to her. “Did you arrange this?” she asked Gail almost accusingly, eyes wide with surprise. 

Gail looked back at her with uncharacteristic coyness. Dani shook her head in disbelief, but delighted with her friend’s attentiveness.

“Now, there’s no chair for me to pull up so you’ll have to make space,” Stella said, referring to the benches that were bolted to the table. She stood waiting in between Dani and Gail, who sat next to each other, and the entire side scooted to make space. Stella took her seat next Dani, and softly slid her fingertips against Dani’s back, coming to a resting point on her lower back. Everything in Dani responded to her slightest touch and her spirit curled itself toward Stella. 

“I never got to say a proper goodbye,” Stella whispered in Dani’s ear, eyes full of promise.


	6. Roses, baby's breath and aster

That summer Stella had a bedroom full of pink roses, baby’s breath and aster. The flowers came in four crates. To stop them from crushing one another, Stella put an old bedsheet on her hardwood floor in the spare bedroom and used every vase, glass bottle and bowl-shaped implement she had. It covered her floor entirely, densely packed glass globes that each reflected the late evening sun with three translucent rings, elongating as the evening wore on. They stayed there for a weekend, and whenever Stella ran upstairs she peeked through her door and tiptoed around them to fill up the water that the flowers gulped during a golden July. The aroma seeped into her sheets and walls and stayed for a few hours after they had gone.

***

She took a small bouquet of pink English roses to offer to Reed when they first went kayaking. Gliding through the water at sunset with her at the helm, the roar in her head dulled to a trickle. The sun tapped her on her sunburned shoulders. The roses rested on Reed’s dress-covered knees for safekeeping, until she could cut the ends off with diagonal snips and keep them on her kitchen countertop.

***

Reed had summoned her to the living room to help her fold the bed sheets in the chill of the air conditioner. It was a strictly choreographed quotidian dance, first joining in the middle to grab the corners, then taking a few steps back to keep the material taut, folding each corner simultaneously length-ways, then folding across, and joining again. When they had a neat little pile to bring upstairs, Stella saw that the fabric softener in the laundry basket was called baby’s breath.

***

The neighbour’s sprinkler was on at night and its sputtering hiss was drifting through the open window in their bedroom. They’d opened it so they could perhaps get some rest during an oppressively sticky night, but their optimistic plea to the weather gods was fruitless. A rogue rose petal had wedged itself under the leg of her bed. Stella dipped her fingers in the tumbler on the nightstand and let a drop drip on Reed’s sweaty spine. Reed lethargically slapped her own back. “I love you,” Stella said. “Then stop waking me up,” Reed mumbled drowsily.

***

They took a morning walk through Primrose Hill before the world woke up. Against the backdrop of the colourful plaster of the townhouses, with their round columns, they ran into a friend of Reed’s from school. The townhouses were painted in pastels, only a shade lighter than the deep violet aster that had taken up residence on her bedroom floor one weekend. “This is Stella, my fianceé,” she heard Reed say while Stella tore her gaze from the buildings, and extended her hand to the man in front of them.

***


	7. Chapter 7

Music from the Equinox fair swirled above the semi-detached houses in Georgia’s suburb. The foliage from a big elm rustled in the gentle breeze, and a few premature autumn leaves wriggled free from their tree onto the grass in the back garden.

“So, we’d met through work a couple months ago,” Reed said, stubbing out her cigarette and blowing out the smoke in the cool midnight air. “And I was meant to work with her on a case but I had to pull out because of the thing with Rose.”

“Right,” Georgia said, as she gathered her scarf around her chest, and opened the patio doors so they could reunite with the bottle of Pinot Grigio on the dinner table, where the remains of their fish dinner lay untouched. Back inside, Reed settled into the chair and put her pack back in her bag. 

“What’s her name again?” Georgia said while she screwed the top off a new bottle.

“Stella.” Reed said, and looked to the floor to hide that she was really very proud to say her name, and it made the corners of her mouth twitch upwards when she didn’t want them to. “She came over, and we were on the bed because I wanted to show her a painting I’d done.

“How romantic,” Georgia said, clearly enjoying teasing Reed. “You definitely just skipped over a part of the story.”

“Shut up. She brought me chocolates. And I put some chocolates in my mouth and… she just leant over and kissed me?”

Georgia raised her eyebrows to feign surprise.

“She said it just felt like the thing to do, to taste the chocolate.” Reed hum-laughed. “And I said she could do it again if she wanted to, and she did. And, er, it’s just really hard to describe what it was like… it was a lot. Because, first off, she is so, so beautiful. Sometimes it’s hard to even look her because she’s so intense, you know. So to have her kissing me, just the idea of it, and the physicality of it, it was a lot. When a kiss is really good, you know how you stop feeling the individual parts of it, and it just becomes one giant pleasurable experience. I felt like I was buzzing. She’s so soft, and she smells really nice. And she was laying on top of me and started touching me underneath my shirt.”

“Ooh, it’s getting saucy,” Georgia slurred, and she swung her wine glass sloppily with a flick of her wrist.

Reed rolled her eyes at her friend, but she continued. “And the way she was touching me… it was really light at first and again, it was just the idea of her touching me there that amplified it so much. It was featherlight, you’d think it’d be ticklish but it wasn’t. But she didn’t stay there long, and she slipped inside of me pretty quickly — you know I’m really sensitive there. And I was kind of like this.” Reed tipped her head back. “And she was like, kissing me along my jawline, and her hair was touching my face, and her entire body was touching mine and I think I came within the first minute? Just like a… like a jolt of shimmering… energy throughout the centre channel of my body. It felt so exposing, but she was very sweet about it. And then that took the edge off it a bit and it returned to something resembling more of a normal physical response, but Jesus. It was so good.”

“Now if only you could get my Jack to do some of that,” Georgia joked while she got up and finally carried their plates to kitchen. Reed drained the rest of her white wine in one gulp while thinking about Stella’s tits.


End file.
